Paul Gillingham: evaluation

Transcript context

…No. Okay, maybe we can go back to that because that also fascinates me. Per capita income growth, again, that’s an extremely good question. I think that Mexico has an overall impressive medium-term GDP growth. At the end of the ’60s, it’s the 27th-largest economy in the globe. Right now, it’s the 13th. The question becomes really income distribution. I think that if you look at it not in question of a few years or maybe a decade, but over a longer time, Mexican economic growth has been impressive. This isn’t all down to hard work or smart policy. It’s down to the great advantage of being next door to the world’s largest market. What it does mean is that you have maybe not the extremely accelerated economic growth of right now in India, but post NAFTA, you actually do get quite a lot of quite fast takeoff, speed of growth. Maybe it’s just that Mexico has actually gone a stage beyond India. India is, if you want, playing catch-up. That’s me thinking on my feet. What do you think? I think human capital is by far the biggest problem. Then the slow rate at which small informal businesses are willing to enter the more heavily regulated sector is a real bottleneck.…

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